President Volodymyr Zelensky has appointed an experienced combat general, Yurii Halushkin, commander of the Territorial Defense Forces of the Armed Forces of Ukraine. The relevant decree was signed 1 January.
According to the Law of Ukraine «On the Fundamentals of National Resistance», which comes into force 1 January, the leading role in the organization and implementation of Ukrainian territorial defence belongs to the Territorial Defense Forces of the Armed Forces.
In 2001-2002, Yurii Halushkin was a participant in an international peacekeeping operation in Kosovo (Federal Republic of Yugoslavia). Since 2014, he has participated in the Anti-Terrorist Operation / Joint Forces Operation of the Ukrainian Army in the partially occupied Donetsk and Luhansk regions.
From June 2014 to January 2015, he served as Commander of the Highly Mobile Airborne Troops, which were then part of the Land Forces of the Ukrainian Armed Forces. After the separation of the Highly Mobile Airborne Troops as a separate type of troops of the Armed Forces, Yurii Halushkin became Deputy Commander.
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From December 2019 he served as Chief Inspector of the Ministry of Defense of Ukraine, and from mid-2020 – Deputy Chief Inspector.
In December 2020, Yuri Halushkin was awarded the rank of brigadier general. He was awarded the Order of Bohdan Khmelnytskyi II and III degrees.
Earlier, Tvoe Misto citizen media-hub, which produces Lviv Now, organised one of its regular single-issue, problem-solving public forums to find out what the new law on national resistance from January 1 will change, how Lviv prepares for a possible threat from Russia, and what are the possibilities of the city and region in the organization of territorial defence.
Lviv Now also prepared an interview with Ostap Kryvdyk, a political scientist-activist and associate researcher at the Ukrainian Catholic University Analytical Center, in which we talked if Ukraine is ready for provocations, whether the crisis on the Belarusian-Polish border is part of an investigation into Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, and whether an escalation of the conflict by Russia is possible.
Translated by Vitalii Holich
You can read a Ukrainian language version of this story here.
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Lviv Now is an English-language website for Lviv, Ukraine’s «tech-friendly cultural hub.» It is produced by Tvoe Misto («Your City») media-hub, which also hosts regular problem-solving public forums to benefit the city and its people.
